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D R ONE S AND THE ETHIC S OF
TA R GETED KILLING
D R ONE S AND THE ETHIC S OF
TA R GETED KILLING

Kenneth R. Himes, OFM

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
A wholly owned subsidiary of
The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
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Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB,

United Kingdom

Copyright © 2016 by Rowman & Littlefield

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer
who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Himes, Kenneth R., 1950–
Drones and the ethics of targeted killing / Kenneth R. Himes, OFM.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4422-3155-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4422-3156-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-1-4422-3157-3 (electronic) 1. Drone aircraft—Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Drone air-
craft—Government policy—United States. 3. Targeted killing—Moral and ethical aspects. 4. Tar-
geted killing—Government policy—United States. I. Title.
UG1242.D7H56 2016
172'.42—dc23
2015018994

TM
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

 For my students
at the Washington Theological Union 1980–2003
and at Boston College 2004 to the present
It has been a pleasure (at least for me).
 CONTENTS

List of Acronyms ix
Preface xi

1 Understanding Targeted Killing and Drones 1

The Language of Killing 2
Targeted Killing Today 6
Drones: Their Nature and Use 11
Remote Killing 13
Legal, Policy, and Moral Concerns 15
2 The Distant Contexts of the Debate 21
Targeted Killing in the Classical World 21
Targeted Killing and Ancient Israel 25
Tyrannicide in the Christian Tradition 31
Assassination 46
3 The Proximate Context: Israel and the Intifada 51
Israeli Public Debate 55
The High Court of Justice 77
Takeaways from the Israeli Experience 81
4 The Immediate Context: The U.S. War on Terrorism 85
The Obama Administration’s Policy 86
A Public Killing 89
A Public Hearing 93
vii
viii CONTENTS

Speaking in Public 95
The President’s Speech 105
How Does an Individual Become a Target? 112
How Is a Targeted Killing Implemented? 116
Summing Up 118
5 The Future Context: Addressing the Moral Issues 121
Discrimination 122
Imminence 129
Death and Harm to Civilians 135
Last Resort 142
Strategic Success 145
Perpetual War 151
Bad Precedents 152
Drones and Democracy 159
Final Thoughts 165
Notes 169
Index 195
 LIST OF ACRONYMS

AFB air force base

AQAP al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula
AUMF Authorization for the Use of Military Force
BIJ Bureau of Investigative Journalism
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
DARPA Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
DPH direct participation in hostilities
FISA Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
HVT high-value target
ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross
IDF Israel Defense Forces
JSOC Joint Special Operations Command
LWJ Long War Journal
MAM military-age male
NAF New America Foundation
PA Palestinian Authority
PFLP Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

ix
x LIST OF A CRONYMS

PLO Palestine Liberation Organization

POW prisoner of war
RPA/RPV remotely piloted aircraft (or vehicle)
UAV unoccupied (or unmanned) aerial vehicle
WMDs weapons of mass destruction
 PREFACE

On September 30, 2011, Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric and a

native-born American citizen, died in northern Yemen. Mr. Awlaki was
killed by a CIA drone attack in which he was the specific target. The
stated reason for the U.S. government’s deliberate killing of one of its
own citizens was that Awlaki was an active leader of al-Qaida in the
Arabian Peninsula. Mr. Awlaki appears to be the first U.S. citizen that our
government has publicly targeted for killing. Reactions to his death
ranged from praise for another Obama administration success in the fight
against terrorists to condemnation of Obama’s decision to approve the
extrajudicial killing of a fellow American.
One critic challenged those on the political left who criticized the
Bush administration’s counterterrorist policies yet support Obama’s ac-
tions. Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com raised the issue of a double stan-
dard, suggesting that if the Bush White House had a “hit list” there would
be Democratic anger everywhere. Yet the reaction of many Obama voters
was muted. He asked, “If you’re willing to endorse having the White
House functionaries meet in secret—with no guidelines, no oversight, no
transparency—and compile lists of American citizens to be killed by the
CIA without due process, what aren’t you willing to support?” For good
measure he also added, “Remember, good Democrats hate the death pen-
alty because they think it’s so terribly barbaric to execute people whose
guilt is in doubt (even if, unlike Awlaki, they’ve enjoyed an indictment

xi
xi i P REFA CE

and full jury trial, lawyers, the right to examine evidence and to confront
witnesses, multiple appeals, and habeas petitions).”
As one who usually finds himself on the political left, is a member of
the Democratic Party, voted for Obama in two presidential elections, and
opposes the death penalty, I thought, just maybe, Mr. Greenwald was
talking to me. And so I went back to a file I had started in preparation for
a class presentation in a course on the ethics of war and peace that I have
taught for many years. The presentation was to be on targeted killing, but
it was never given since students enrolled in the course were given a
choice of topics to be included in the syllabus and targeted killing did not
make the cut.
Since then drones have become a major topic of controversy in the
United States and around the world. A simple Google search on “drone
warfare” produced 7,630,000 items. While much of this attention is all to
the good—trying to promote understanding of the topic and bringing
policy discussion about drones out into the open—the attention can be
misleading. Drones raise some new issues for the ethics of killing, but
many of the questions that are being asked about drone warfare pertain to
another broader topic of which drones are but a piece.
Many questions asked about the use of drones for lethal attacks have
been asked before and are not occasioned for the first time by the growing
use of drones. Instead, the questions have been voiced in various forms
during earlier debates about aerial bombardment and other weapons that
permit remote killing. One aim of this study is to return to some of those
prior debates to gain perspective on the present discussion of drone war-
fare. My main contention is that drone attacks are a species of the genus
of human action called targeted killing. Clarity about the morality of
targeted killing in general will assist in an ethical assessment of the par-
ticular use of drones in counterterrorist activity.
Drones, or remotely piloted air vehicles, have become an iconic tool
of contemporary armed conflict. Without question an armed drone is a
powerful weapon. The combat value of drone strikes is clear and is the
main reason for the rapid expansion of their use. However, to what degree
is the use of armed drones ethical? How might a reliance on current and
PRE FACE xiii

future drones challenge the appropriate management of war in ways that

will prove to be highly negative, even for those who strongly support
their current use? Certainly the history of military technology and warfare
is filled with cases where what was clearly valuable from one perspective
turns out to be a terrible mistake some years later—and, often, a grave
ethical failure.
War is always action involving profound moral questions. It is useful
and sobering to reflect upon our current drone policy using the guidance
of a moral tradition. A moral tradition situates contemporary ethical de-
bates within a perspective that gives us critical distance from our immedi-
ate situation, allowing us to draw upon the collective wisdom of genera-
tions before us. The discussion of ethics in war has evolved over centuries
and those developments can help us reflect upon the death and destruc-
tion that come with armed conflict.
Perhaps the best known tradition of moral reasoning about armed
conflict is the just war tradition. While there are a number of different
theories of just war within the broad moral tradition, what permits these
various theories to be considered a tradition is that they share a “family
resemblance.” That resemblance distinguishes them from other critical
approaches to warfare. All theories within the just war tradition share
fundamental tenets that set them apart from pacifist (all war is morally
wrong) or purely pragmatic (do whatever it takes to win) viewpoints on
warfare. Any theory of just war maintains that (1) war is subject to ethical
analysis; (2) war is justifiable for at least one cause and in at least one
circumstance; and (3) moral norms can and should be devised to govern
the decision to wage war as well as how to conduct a war. The pacifist
tradition challenges the second point and a purely pragmatic approach to
waging war disagrees with the third point and possibly the first.
As drones come to play a greater role in our current conflicts, it is
incumbent upon our democratic society to engage in moral reasoning as
well as legal, strategic, and political thought concerning armed drones.
For those who stand within the just war tradition there is an obligation to
assess why we go to war, but also to consider the moral dimensions of
how to act when at war. Should one accept the rightness of the decision
xi v P REFA CE

for the United States to initiate a military campaign against international

terrorism, there must still be a judgment passed on the means employed in
that campaign.
Part of this process requires that we ask ourselves a variety of ques-
tions. Armed drones raise difficult questions—moral questions that can-
not be offset by expediency and efficiency. Engaging the drone policy of
the United States from a moral perspective is one of the core challenges
of our time. Much of the debate surrounding drone use has been provided
by lawyers. There are legal questions about how the Bush and Obama
administrations have used drones and whether there is proper legal au-
thorization for the policies under domestic law and whether those policies
are within the framework of international law. I am not a lawyer, and
while I have learned a great deal from the legal analyses that I have
studied, it is not the legality but the morality of drone use that is the focus
of this book. As a Catholic theologian I am convinced that any positive
law must be judged by a higher moral law. And so it is the ethical
perspective that is foremost in what follows. Of course, one does not have
to hold religious beliefs to believe there is a moral law that has primacy
over the existing law of a nation or nations.
A word about the style and format of the volume is necessary.
Throughout the book I often use abbreviations or acronyms after the first
use of an expression or organization. I have chosen to use “drones” to
describe the aircraft that are also designated by the acronyms UAVs
(unmanned aerial vehicles) or the preferred air force term, RPVs (remote-
ly piloted vehicles). This is due solely to the fact that despite the commo-
nality of UAV or RPV in academic and government literature, the word
“drone” remains the term most used in popular discourse.
Another decision was to refer to the terrorist organization once led by
Osama bin Laden as “al-Qaida.” There have been various English
spellings of the group and that is reflected in the sources referenced for
this book. For the sake of consistency I have changed even direct quota-
tions so that al-Qaida is the spelling used throughout the book.
The overall trajectory of the book is to first examine some past con-
texts that will inform my consideration of how U.S. policy on armed
PRE FACE xv

drones should develop in the future. Chapter 1 presents introductory re-

marks concerning targeted killing and how the expression is to be under-
stood. It is important to clarify the language used to describe lethal acts,
for I have found dozens of examples in the literature of authors talking
past one another or confusing issues by the way that words are used
without clarification. The chapter also provides essential background in-
formation about drones and clears up common misconceptions.
The next four chapters examine four contexts that help in devising a
moral assessment of drone use in targeted killing. Chapter 2 takes a look
at the distant context of how targeted killing has been treated throughout
the centuries, including in the Bible and in classical Greek and Roman
literature. Then in chapter 3 there is a study of the proximate context, a
vibrant debate that took place among Israelis over the public announce-
ment of the state of Israel’s practice of targeted killing at the time of the
second Intifada. Chapter 4 moves the investigation into the immediate
context of the Obama administration’s policy and the rationale provided
to justify it. Finally, in chapter 5, I suggest the future context for drone
killing by organizing the central issues for a moral assessment under a
variety of headings and presenting my thoughts about each of them. It is
my hope that even if a reader disagrees with my conclusions I will have
provided the information and identified the concerns in a way that is
helpful for moral reflection.
In closing I want to acknowledge Tate Krasner, who provided much
helpful research as well as good cheer during his time as my undergrad
research assistant. In addition I wish to thank Sarah Stanton, my editor,
and all the production staff at Rowman & Littlefield whose labors have
brought my original manuscript to publication.
 1

UNDERSTANDING TARGETED KILLING

AND DRONES

On March 7, 2013, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a son-in-law of Osama bin

Laden, was arrested at an airport in Jordan and placed in American custo-
dy. As a result he became part of a select group: a high-level terrorist
suspect who was not killed by American forces when found. As one
report described him, Abu Ghaith was “a rare illustration of what Obama
administration officials have often said is their strong preference for cap-
turing terrorists rather than killing them.” 1 Despite that stated preference,
however, there have been far more killings of terrorist suspects than there
have been arrests of such individuals. The ratio of killing to capture is
roughly 30 to 1. In short, “killing is more convenient than capture for
both the United States and the foreign countries” where the suspects are
located. 2
Following the attacks of 9/11, the United States adopted a policy of
targeted killing (often abbreviated “TK”) as a key element in the war
against terrorists. Both the U.S. military and the Central Intelligence
Agency have engaged in the practice of targeted killing. The military
used it as part of combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq; the CIA has
followed the practice in its antiterrorist strategies in Pakistan, Yemen, and
Somalia. While the availability of drones has surely encouraged an ex-
pansion of the practice, it is an error to equate targeted killing with drone
attacks. In modern times, sniper fire, cruise missiles, Special Ops attacks,
1
2 CHA P TER 1

helicopter gunships, poisonings, car bombs, and other explosive devices

have all been used in targeted killings, even if the Obama administration
is increasingly reliant upon the employment of drones for carrying out its
policy. Understanding the practice of targeted killing is important since it
is likely to grow as an element of U.S. military policy for reasons that will
be explained in this chapter.

THE LANGUAGE OF KILLING

Steven David, an Israeli political philosopher who has written extensively

on the topic, defines targeted killing as “the intentional slaying of a spe-
cific individual or group of individuals undertaken with explicit govern-
ment approval.” 3 The United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudi-
cial, summary, or arbitrary executions has added additional nuance, de-
fining targeted killing as “the intentional, premeditated and deliberate use
of lethal force, by States or their agents acting under colour of law, or by
an organized armed group in armed conflict, against a specific individual
who is not in the physical custody of the perpetrator.” 4 So targeted killing
is not an action by private individuals but agents of a state or a party in
armed conflict. It is not accidental or random and the victim is not under
the control of the killer. The use of targeted killing also claims to satisfy
an authorized legal standard.
The term targeted killing, however, is not defined by international
law. It was first used in 1986 by the human rights group Americas Watch
to differentiate the killings of specific individuals by Salvadoran death
squads from random killings done by those same death squads during that
nation’s civil war. 5 The expression came to greater prominence in 2000
during the second Intifada as part of the state of Israel’s policy of counter-
terrorism.
Many moral traditions, including the vast majority of authors within
the Jewish and Christian traditions, permit the taking of life under specif-
ic circumstances. A simple but important distinction is between murder
and killing. Killing is the taking of a life, and when done to a human
being it is homicide. Murder is understood as unjust killing or homicide.
U N DE RST AN DI N G T ARGETED KILLING A ND DRONES 3

All murders are killings but not all killings are murders because some
killings are not viewed as being unjust by the majority of commentators
in these traditions.
One error in the present debates is the use of ethically loaded language
to describe targeted killing. That is, expressions like “murder” are used to
describe targeted killing, which only begs the question to be examined.
Are all targeted killings unjust or may there be morally justifiable tar-
geted killings? Describing targeted killing as “extrajudicial killing,” link-
ing the practice to the tragic deaths of the many victims of repressive
regimes in Central and South America during the 1970s and 1980s, is
another example of ethically loaded language. 6 Perhaps the most com-
monly used word as an equivalent for targeted killing is that of “assassi-
nation,” a particular species of killing that has been debated throughout
the centuries. Assassination figures prominently in the debate over tar-
geted killing because many critics cite both domestic and international
law prohibiting assassination. So if targeted killing is presumed to be the
equivalent of assassination, the critics claim it violates established legal
norms.

Assassination and Targeted Killing

Although widely practiced in different historical eras, assassination is

now commonly viewed negatively 7 and so is banned by international
treaty. 8 It is also proscribed by customary law. Both Hugo Grotius in the
seventeenth century and Emer de Vattel in the eighteenth century, fore-
runners of modern international law, viewed assassination as a violation
of the norms of statecraft.
In the modern lexicon of killing, assassination has a pejorative conno-
tation due to its being linked with treachery and perfidy. In 1863, the U.S.
Army adopted the Lieber Code, which referred to assassination as “bar-
barism.” The Hague Conference of 1907 formulated a treaty that forbade
combatants in “armed conflict” from killing another “treacherously,” a
code word for assassination. In a similar vein, Brian Johnstone has argued
that the Christian moral tradition distinguishes between assassination and
4 CHA P TER 1

tyrannicide by treating assassination as a particular way of committing

tyrannicide, one that involves unacceptable means, that is, treachery, per-
fidy. By his reading, the tradition allows tyrannicide under certain condi-
tions, but bans the use of treacherous means. 9
Closer to our own time and place, the Church and Pike committees,
parallel Senate and House investigations of CIA activity during the
decades of the 1950s and 1960s, exposed and strongly condemned
American assassination plots against Patrice Lumumba of Congo, Fidel
Castro of Cuba, and other political leaders. The outrage resulting from
those revelations led President Gerald Ford to issue an executive order in
1976 that prohibited assassination or conspiracy to commit assassination
by any employee of the U.S. government. In 1978 Jimmy Carter ex-
panded the ban to all those acting on behalf of the U.S. government,
whether employed or not. Every successive president, including Barack
Obama, has reaffirmed Executive Order 12333. 10
However, U.S. law prohibits government-sponsored assassination
only in peacetime. International law also assumes the assassin is acting in
peacetime on behalf of a state and not as a private individual. Both the
domestic and international laws prohibiting assassination still permit at-
tacks upon specific individuals of an enemy regime in time of war as long
as the person is an active participant in the military chain of command. So
the legal ban on assassination does not pertain to military acts in the
context of armed conflict, which is why the issue of American forces
carrying out targeted killings to combat terrorism is hardly settled, or
even clarified, by calling them assassinations.
Assassination in peacetime is generally seen as a particular form of
murder. Some so-called assassinations are simply unjust killings carried
out by private individuals without government authorization and amount
to little more than politically motivated murder, for example, the deaths
of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy.
The absolute wrongfulness of assassination is not self-evident, howev-
er. Not all assassinations necessarily entail treacherous or perfidious ac-
tivity. The crucial moral factor would seem to be less a matter of betrayal
or disloyalty and more the rightness of the premeditated, deliberate kill-
U N DE RST AN DI N G T ARGETED KILLING A ND DRONES 5

ing of a specific individual. Why is the specific victim targeted? And

what justification can be given for overriding the strong presumption
against taking a life? History testifies to a broad range of answers given in
response to those questions, with not all the answers leading to the con-
clusion that a given assassination was wrong.
In the case of attempts upon Adolf Hitler’s life, the crucial moral
factor would seem to have been less a matter of betrayal, or disloyalty, or
unjust trickery, and more the rightness or wrongfulness of a premeditated,
deliberate killing of a specific individual for political purposes. Tradition-
ally, the tests have been: what is the character of the targeted leader, what
is the character of the regime, and are there political options available to
bring about needed change without assassination? In the case of Hitler
there were morally serious people of sensitive conscience who thought
assassination possible. 11
Some clarity about terminology is needed then, even if the distinctions
are only stipulated for this book. Assassination, as I will employ the term,
is understood to be a targeted killing done in peacetime, by an authorized
agent of a state, and for a political motive. Therefore, a targeted killing
during armed conflict is not assassination: snipers are not assassins; a
targeted killing by a private individual is not assassination: a Mafia hit
man is not an assassin; a targeted killing done for financial gain is not
assassination: a drug dealer killing another dealer is not an assassin.
Due to the lack of precision in terminology and, as chapter 2 will
demonstrate, the varying viewpoints regarding assassination, its usage as
a description of targeted killing does not serve to clarify the ethical as-
sessment. Some, though not all, targeted killings may be termed assassi-
nation in the sense prohibited by U.S. and international law, yet there are
acts of targeted killing not accurately described as assassinations in the
legal sense. It is these targeted killings that will be examined in the U.S.
policy of counterterrorism.
Some assassinations, however, are acts of targeted killing. Whether
they are legally permissible and/or morally licit has long been a topic of
debate. As noted above, peacetime assassination has been prohibited in
the United States since the 1970s and is opposed on ethical grounds by
6 CHA P TER 1

many commentators. But there have been periods in times past when
assassinations have been legal and defended on moral grounds, as will be
discussed in the next chapter. So targeted killing may include some assas-
sinations, though not all, and targeted killing also includes other lethal
actions not accurately described as assassinations.

TARGETED KILLING TODAY

Of course, the phenomenon of targeted killing is nothing new. As one

former government official put it, “strategic manhunts themselves are
almost as old as organized warfare itself.” We know that Alexander the
Great sought the defeated Persian ruler, Darius III, from Mosul to eastern
Iran and the ancient Romans targeted Hannibal as he fled after the Second
Punic War. 12
It was the Israeli policy of targeted killing directed at Palestinian
militants, acknowledged in 2000, that occasioned the first sustained and
public debate about the morality of targeted killing. That debate will be
examined in chapter 3. Since the terror attacks on U.S. soil in 2001, it is
the U.S. policy of targeted killing that has now moved to center stage in
the debates about the ethics of the practice.
On September 17, 2001, George W. Bush signed a still classified
presidential directive that delegated to the CIA the authority to conduct
targeted killings. Although it is difficult to know with exactitude the
death count, since there are no official figures given by any side involved,
many informed commentators estimate there have been over four thou-
sand people killed by targeted killing in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen,
places where we are not involved in a declared war. If the number of
those killed as a result of targeted killing in the war zones of Afghanistan
and Iraq were added to the total dead, the number would be considerably
higher.
Right after 9/11 the policy was focused on “high-value targets”
(HVTs), terrorists perceived to be significant actors in al-Qaida. With the
invasion of Iraq the practice of targeted killing greatly expanded. The
U.S. military undertook a strategy of terrorist hunting through the activ-
U N DE RST AN DI N G T ARGETED KILLING A ND DRONES 7

ities of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). These Special

Operations forces became crucial to the counterterrorism policy of the
United States. Under the leadership of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the
JSOC developed an approach similar to that of the CIA’s Phoenix pro-
gram during the Vietnam War. In night raids upon homes of suspected
terrorists, the American forces would either kill or capture their targets
and then scour phones and computers for further intelligence about the
insurgency. 13
One significant difference between the strategy pursued by JSOC and
that of the CIA in Vietnam is that the counterterrorism campaign in Iraq
soon grew to the point that the borders of the battlefield extended far
beyond the declared war zone of Iraq. The Taliban in Afghanistan were
also a target for McChrystal’s forces and soon targeted killing was ex-
tended to Pakistan, which was providing safe havens for the Taliban
leadership. In the latter case, however, it was not ground troops carrying
out the targeted killing but armed drones. During George W. Bush’s
presidency there were four dozen drone strikes in Pakistan. As of early
2015, Barack Obama has authorized more than four hundred strikes by
the CIA in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.
Targeted killing is likely to continue for a variety of reasons. First,
many nations, including the United States, have a tendency to “personal-
ize” conflicts. Whether it is Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Qaddafi, bin Laden, or
another leader, there is a need to rally public support in a conflict and that
is often helped if a specific villain can be named and targeted. Second, as
the weapons of war have become more destructive, the communications
technology that brings the effects of war home to viewers is greater.
Today, the general public witnesses the horrible toll taken by extensive
damage to civil infrastructure, high numbers of civilian deaths, and wide-
spread environmental damage wrought by large-scale conventional war-
fare. Consequently, it is hard for national leaders to sustain public support
for such a war, while the promise of small-bore conflict with precise
targeted killing makes for an attractive alternative to the same leaders.
Particularly in a democracy, political leaders seek “to focus on as narrow
a target as possible when considering how to enter a conflict.” 14
8 CHA P TER 1

Another important factor promoting targeted killing is that it is more

and more the case that individuals and not just states are true threats to
security. The ability to obtain weapons of mass destruction (WMDs),
particularly biological and chemical weapons, is within the reach of many
well-financed and organized terrorists. Of course, there is no need to
utilize WMDs to bring about great harm. No such weapons were part of
the 9/11 attacks or other assaults on embassies, military compounds, and
civilian groups by terror organizations. Regardless, the threat posed by a
single leader or a relatively small group of terrorists has provided a ratio-
nale for targeted killing as an effective and low-cost way of protecting
innocent people and maintaining national security.
And, finally, there is also the increased ability to engage in targeted
killing as a policy. As recently as Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the
number of precision-guided munitions used by the United States was
below 8 percent. In 2003, in the second Iraq war, the number rose to 68
percent. In subsequent years, fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S.
military has used nearly 100 percent precision-guided munitions. In sum,
“while individuals pose a greater threat to America than ever before, the
United States likewise has a greater ability than ever before to target
individuals and eliminate them.” 15 For the foreseeable future it is very
likely that targeted killing will be a policy used by the United States as
well as other nations, particularly in asymmetric conflicts, that is, those
conflicts where there are huge disparities between the military power,
legal status, or strategies of the combatants. It is imperative, therefore,
that there be an open and sustained debate about the wisdom and legiti-
macy of such a practice.
One aspect of that debate is the legal analysis of targeted killing. Acts
of targeted killing in the context of armed conflict are clearly permissible
under U.S. and international law. It has long been recognized that snipers
may move about the front lines during a battle in order to kill an enemy
military leader. That is one form of targeted killing. It is another matter,
however, if the sniper’s target is a political leader with no role in the
enemy’s chain of command. As noted previously, legitimate targeted kill-
ing is not the same as assassination.
U N DE RST AN DI N G T ARGETED KILLING A ND DRONES 9

Nor is it unarguably clear what counts as armed conflict to be gov-

erned by the laws of war where lethal force can be employed more broad-
ly than in other environments. This is part of the debate concerning tar-
geted killing in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen; these areas are not offi-
cially war zones, unlike targeted killing in the established conflict areas
of Afghanistan and Iraq. The legal framework of armed conflict was
designed with a model of interstate conflict in mind. It is less well suited
to a model of armed conflict involving nonstate actors like terrorist or-
ganizations.
As will be discussed in chapters 3 and 4, arguments have been made
that at least some of the traditional legal norms of armed conflict apply
when dealing with groups like al-Qaida. Constraints like respect for state
sovereignty place conditions on where and when the United States might
target someone. Further, the laws of war require observance of norms like
proportionality and discrimination that limit the who, when, and how of
attacking targets. Taking such norms into account, the U.S. policy re-
mains legally permissible, according to supporters. 16
On the other hand, if the conditions of armed conflict do not pertain,
then any U.S. administration is bound by the Constitution and interna-
tional human rights law. Under these stricter constraints the government
may only engage in lethal action after due process is followed in deter-
mining the target, or when targeted killing would be an act of last resort
in order to respond to an imminent threat of deadly harm. 17
One of the challenges to resolving the debate has been the lack of
transparency on the part of the Bush and Obama administrations in pre-
senting the government’s view of the legal and moral grounds for the
policy of targeted killing, particularly in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.
If the official policy were acknowledged, explained, and defended, then
both supporters and opponents of the government’s actions could argue
specifics. Instead, we have both sides discussing a policy that is known
only in general terms.
10 CHA P TER 1

Signature Strikes

One of the most controversial types of targeted killing is the activity

called “signature strikes” or, more recently, “terrorist attack disruption
strikes.” These are lethal attacks against a target defined as much by
demography as by other evidence. In the lexicon of counterinsurgency a
military-age male (MAM) is a category that extends to all men who are of
fighting age, usually ranging from fifteen to seventy. In early 2008,
George Bush approved the practice of attacking convoys of vehicles,
even without positive identification of the identities of the people beyond
their being MAMs, if the occupants appeared to be al-Qaida or Taliban
fighters on the move, and when the risk of casualties beyond the convoy
participants was low.
Due to the lack of transparency on the part of both the Bush and
Obama administrations regarding the government’s policy, there are not a
lot of specifics about signature strikes. There are some facts that have
come out due to leaks, on the ground research in the Middle East region,
and occasional background briefings. In a strict sense, signature strikes
do not really function as targeted killings since the specific identities of
the targets are not known. Signature strikes are approved on the basis of
behavior that suggests the individuals are associated with terror networks.
For example, the CIA has engaged in “staggered drone strikes” or “dou-
ble-tap” strikes, using a second attack to kill rescuers who arrive at the
scene of the initial attack upon the first victims, the presumption being
that it is fellow jihadists who would come to the rescue. There have also
been targeted killings based on the presence of MAMs in areas where
terrorists are known to be present.
The American policy of targeted killing poses a number of questions
that will be addressed in chapters 4 and 5. Targeted killing underscores
the difficulty of categorizing the actors and actions involved in contem-
porary armed conflict. Are the targets of targeted killing to be viewed as
ordinary soldiers, illegal combatants, or civilian criminals? Is the motiva-
tion of targeted killing retribution, deterrence, interdiction, or preemp-
tion? Are targeted killings acts of legitimate self-defense or morally dubi-
ous executions? How are targets selected for targeted killing in the strict
U N DE RST AN DI N G T ARGETED KILLING A ND DRONES 11

sense? For signature strikes? What are the ethical and legal bases for a
policy of targeted killing outside declared battlefield areas? What is the
review process for approving targeted killings of American citizens?
What constraints are in place with regard to the exercise of presidential
power? All these concerns, among others, require comment in any ethical
assessment of targeted killing.
The current practice of using armed drone strikes to kill individuals
identified as terrorist threats is the most commonly cited example of
targeted killing. Before concluding this chapter it will be helpful, there-
fore, to provide a bit of background concerning drones and their use in
America’s counterterrorism strategy.

DRONES: THEIR NATURE AND USE

While the more technical term is unmanned or unoccupied aerial vehicles

(UAVs), and the air force prefers remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs), the
colloquial name of “drones” is widely used. In the 1970s and 1980s a
branch of the Department of Defense called the Defense Advanced Re-
search Projects Agency (DARPA) made early progress in the develop-
ment of drones. This was still the era of the cold war and the original aim
of DARPA was to fashion drones for surveillance purposes in the ongo-
ing superpower rivalry.
In the mid-1990s there were efforts directed to arming drones in order
to attack hard to reach targets. According to a leading researcher on
drones, the interest in armed drones grew from the aim of killing Osama
bin Laden after the deadly bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania
and Kenya. 18 However, armed drones were not ready at that time, which
is why President Bill Clinton used cruise missiles in the 1998 attack on
the al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan and Sudan. “The first known
killing by armed drones occurred in November, 2001, when a Predator
targeted Mohammed Ater, a top al-Qaida military commander, in Af-
ghanistan.” 19 This was during George Bush’s presidency.
At the time of the 9/11 attacks, the United States had roughly fifty
drones; it now has thousands. The exact number is difficult to determine
12 CHA P TER 1

since the army and navy as well as the air force have drones. One educat-
ed guess puts the total number well above eight thousand. The vast major-
ity of drones are used for surveillance. Of the total number, approximate-
ly three to four hundred drones are armed. The most common armed
drones are the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper. It is not their weaponry
that is notable about drones. They carry missiles that are commonly used
by other military launchers and even the largest drones are not heavily
armed. The most common missile on board is a Hellfire missile adapted
from the army, which used it on helicopters to attack tanks and other
armored vehicles. The air force adapted that missile to be more effective
against personnel in an open setting. Drones are not fast: they move at
speeds less than one hundred miles an hour; also, they fly low and are
noisy.
What makes drones notable is “their ability to see and think.” 20 Their
navigational systems can be programmed so that drones are able to fly
themselves from takeoff to landing. They are equipped with powerful
visual sensors and video technology that permit surveillance in the dark
and through clouds. Because they can fly themselves, their operators can
focus on using that surveillance technology without distraction. 21
Without doubt, drones are of great benefit to the counterterrorism
effort. They have distinct advantages over manned aircraft, cruise mis-
siles, and Special Operations attacks. First, unlike manned aircraft where
refueling and crew fatigue limit flight time, drones permit sustained ob-
servation of potential targets for long periods of time. The exact duration
of a flight is not public information but it is known to be longer than
twenty-four hours for some models. And no pilot or ground observers are
at risk during that time.
Second, unlike cruise missiles, drones are almost instantaneous in re-
sponse time. When Clinton ordered the cruise missile attack on the sus-
pected location of Osama bin Laden, the cruise missiles were targeted at a
projected location for where he would be in four to six hours. What the
military calls the cycle of “find-fix-finish” is reduced to seconds in the
case of drones. 22 In addition, drone missiles can be diverted at the very
last minute.
U N DE RST AN DI N G T ARGETED KILLING A ND DRONES 13

Third, drones are cost-effective when compared to manned aircraft.

Drones have a greater propensity to mishaps than conventional aircraft
but their significantly lower production costs still make drones more cost-
effective. 23 The main reasons for drone crashes are bad weather, human
error by operators, and disruption in communication links. 24
Finally, drones do not require American troops to be placed in harm’s
way and, despite the protests over their use in places like Pakistan, they
are a less dramatic violation of a nation’s claim of sovereignty than an
armed force invading on the ground.
Drones are launched from bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other
locales near where they are used. 25 They are piloted remotely by opera-
tors working at places such as Holliman Air Force Base in New Mexico
and Nellis AFB in Nevada. The drones employed by the CIA are con-
trolled by operators near Langley, Virginia. Remote control is not equiva-
lent to robotic. 26 There are about 1,300 pilots trained to operate the
drones and the air force now trains more drone pilots than bomber and
fighter pilots annually. Even so, the flight shifts are frequent and long
compared to manned aircraft and the demand for more drone flights is
growing. Reportedly, many of the first wave of drone pilots are consider-
ing departing the air force due to the work conditions. 27

REMOTE KILLING

One popular misconception about those piloting the drones is that they
are so removed from the battlefield that the experience of war is like
playing a video game. In truth, recent studies suggest that drone operators
suffer from war trauma like other combatants and those who pilot
manned planes. 28 The reason for this is the nature of the intense surveil-
lance that drone pilots do prior to attack. “No doubt, the distance between
the human warfighter and the battlefield has never been longer, but the
psychological proximity can be closer for drone pilots than for other
military personnel.” 29
Another dimension of drone pilots’ experience is that they linger over
a target site and witness the damage that they do, whereas pilots of
14 CHA P TER 1

manned planes hasten to leave once they have fired their weapons. Allied
pilots in World War II killed countless numbers of civilians but they
rarely would have experienced the results of their bombing. Drone pilots
use weapons that are far more accurate than World War II’s aerial bombs,
but the pilots more often than not see close up the accidental deaths they
cause. 30
Yet there is a sense of incongruity when the carnage of a drone attack
is contrasted with an image of the pilot finishing a shift and calmly
driving home to have dinner with family members. Consequently, a va-
riety of critics cite concerns about using remotely piloted vehicles in the
act of killing. “Anonymous murder from a safe distance” 31 and the
“video-game mentality of the drone controllers” 32 are typical comments
in this vein.
Despite the superficial similarities between playing video games and
remote piloting of drones, the latter is serious work for operators as well
as deadly for victims. Dismissing it as video-gaming does not convey the
true nature of the experience. Still, those operating drones are able to
walk away unhurt if a drone should fall from the sky and that is a major
reason why the use of drones is popular with both the Obama administra-
tion and the American public. In one poll of U.S. citizens, 72 percent
were in favor and only 22 percent opposed the use of drone attacks in
combatting terrorists. 33
New forms of weaponry are often accompanied by moral concerns if
they alter the nature of armed conflict, and drones have captured the
attention of the general public because of the possibility that they might
be such transformative weapons. The just war tradition maintains that war
is a human activity subject to governance by moral norms. War cannot be
removed from the realm of morality and still be just. So whether it be
mounted cavalry or crossbows, catapults or submarines, nuclear bombs or
attack drones, there will be new questions and debates surrounding the
utilization of novel means of causing death—as well there should be.
Another issue raised by the “remoteness” of drone killing has been the
suggestion that there is a lack of valor when one of the combatants, the
drone operator, is at no real risk in the armed conflict. 34 The problem with
U N DE RST AN DI N G T ARGETED KILLING A ND DRONES 15

this complaint is that one might have said the same thing about an archer
in the Middle Ages firing from within a castle at a combatant on the
ground outside, or a sniper shooting a sentry from hundreds of yards
away, or a naval missile launcher seated at a console on a ship hundreds
of miles from the field of battle. The issue of long-distance killing has
been around for centuries and drones do not add much new to the topic.
There are other issues raised about remoteness, however, that merit
reflection for defenders of drone killing. Is it possible that drones will
subtly affect the way in which the military determines whether a target
can be captured or killed by means that might better avoid civilian
deaths? If the safety of the drone pilot becomes the standard by which one
compares whether military personnel are put at risk, then we may wind up
inverting the just war tradition. For one clear standard of that tradition is
that soldiers must be willing to bear a measure of risk in order to avoid
civilian casualties. That suggests to me that we ought not use drones to
save American military lives if that only exacerbates the risk that falls
upon foreign civilians. 35

LEGAL, POLICY, AND MORAL CONCERNS

Although the United States generally avoids explicitly discussing that it

follows a policy of targeted killing, it is evident from unclassified docu-
ments, official statements, and our government’s actions that when the
capture of a known terrorist is considered unfeasible the American
government will use the Central Intelligence Agency or the U.S. military
to kill the targeted individual. 36
Many issues and questions arise as a result of this government policy.
One set of questions is predominantly legal. Perhaps the basic issue in the
debate is whether targeted killing is simply extrajudicial execution, pro-
hibited by international and domestic law, since terrorists are civilians.
Terrorists are criminals, not combatants, it is claimed, and should be
captured and arrested using ordinary law enforcement measures and then
prosecuted and punished according to the procedures of the criminal jus-
tice system. The other side of the debate proposes that terrorists are
16 CHA P TER 1

combatants in an armed conflict and may be legitimately targeted for

killing according to the laws of warfare.
The UN Special Rapporteur believes that, “Outside the context of
armed conflict, the use of drones for targeted killing is almost never likely
to be legal.” 37 However, as one commentator has correctly observed,
“The trick, of course, is how we define ‘armed conflict’ in an age of non-
state-affiliated terrorist and insurgent groups operating from places where
the writ of a central government does not extend.” 38
The complicating factor is that international terrorism confounds
much of the standard categories of international law. The premise of the
international law on warfare is that two states engage in conflict, but the
asymmetric war of counterterrorism involves nonstate actors using vio-
lent force against a state. Does counterterrorism demand a different para-
digm than the binary model of it being either conventional warfare or
standard police work?
Domestic U.S. law prohibits assassination by the military except in
times of war. The Authorization for the Use of Military Force passed after
9/11 empowers the president to “use all necessary and appropriate
force . . . in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism
against the United States.” That would legitimate targeted killing by the
American military against known terrorists, but it leaves unclear the ac-
tions of CIA personnel who are noncombatants according to the laws of
war. Laws regarding congressional oversight of the CIA would also have
to be examined to determine if targeted killings by the CIA have been in
accord with the established regulatory regime.
There are also policy questions surrounding targeted killing. Advo-
cates of targeted killing in the struggle against terrorists pose a simple
question. Suppose targeted killing is banned as a tactic and suppose that
in a number of cases arrest is impractical due to the degree of difficulty
and amount of risk to the lives of others. Does that mean that some
terrorists should be left free to continue to plot future attacks? Because
that option seems undesirable to many, targeted killing is proposed as a
defensible measure of last resort. Yet even if one grants that targeted
killing may be appropriate in some narrowly circumscribed cases, there
U N DE RST AN DI N G T ARGETED KILLING A ND DRONES 17

are still questions: who decides upon a target, by what criteria, what
standard of evidence is necessary, what review procedures are in place,
what procedure for holding decision makers accountable for errors is in
place? The lack of transparency and public accountability for present
government policy on targeted killing is a major area of concern.
Even if targeted killings are lawful by international and domestic stan-
dards, and even if there is a policy for targeted killing that is appropriate
to a democracy, the question about its morality remains. And if some use
of targeted killing is morally defensible, can there be immoral overuse?
Might a person consider targeted killing a legitimate tactic in the fight
against international terrorists while finding the tactic of signature strikes
to be morally objectionable? Is there a place for targeted killing in a
theory of just warfare? Must norms such as protection of innocent civil-
ians and last resort be applicable? Is targeted killing preventive in nature,
essentially defensive, or can it be used as punishment for terrorist acts
already committed, a form of retributive justice?
The questions posed above make it clear that much of what we think
we are discussing when talking about drones is really a conversation
about targeted killing. The real issue is not drones, but the killing of
militant terrorists or even suspect terrorists determined by unknown crite-
ria in secret deliberations, with no hard data about the cost in innocent
lives. 39
Yet there are particular concerns about the use of armed drones as a
specific mode of targeted killing; perhaps none more important than the
issue of precedents. At present the United States is the dominant user of
armed drones. But that will change. There are now more than fifty nations
developing surveillance drones, and their military use will grow in time.
The United States is in the position of setting the precedent for drone use
and we ought to establish norms that we would wish others, including our
rivals, to follow. For example, when defining the battlefield, what is to
count as a combat zone in a future with thousands of drones in the air? Do
we wish to live in a world where drones can attack anywhere—an urban
park, a country lane, a suburban backyard, a fishing boat on a lake? Will
everyplace be a potential battlefield where an attack can occur?
18 CHA P TER 1

Another precedent to consider is the definition of who is a terrorist.

Anyone who threatens a nation’s security? That might be an investigative
journalist or political dissident in the eyes of government leaders in some
countries. A secretive process such as the United States has adopted in
determining the targets of drone strikes establishes a precedent that we
may regret once other nations have the capability to launch similar strikes
at those individuals they deem to be legitimate targets on the basis of their
national security.
The question of overreliance upon drones is another issue.
“Since 9/11, over 95% of all non-battlefield targeted killings have been
conducted by drones.” 40 Drones have been especially effective in killing
top al-Qaida leaders. Of the two dozen HVTs in the terrorist organization
who have been killed, Osama bin Laden is the only one not to die as a
result of a drone attack. 41 However, due to the effectiveness of the drone
campaign there now appears to be a loosening of the criteria for targeted
killing. Two scholars who have studied the targets of drone attacks have
concluded that we are no longer killing HVTs but militant operatives of
no particular significance. “On average, only one out of every seven U.S.
drone attacks in Pakistan kills a militant leader. The majority of those
killed in such strikes are not important insurgent commanders but rather
low-level fighters.” 42
Drones, because they strike with impunity, suddenly, and almost any-
where, appear to have a singular ability to terrorize not only legitimate
targets but people in general within a region under surveillance. Drone
strikes also anger those concerned with border sovereignty. And because
of the secrecy of the policy, there is also a public relations dilemma
whereby the rationales for the strikes are not provided or their occurrence
even acknowledged. This allows terrorists and militants to tell their ver-
sion of who the victims were and what happened to them. As a result
there has been a significant rise in antagonism toward the United States,
with the consequence of less cooperation in intelligence gathering, as
well as facilitating the recruitment of new members for terrorist networks.
Greater clarity about targeted killing and the use of armed drones in
carrying out targeted killings is needed. Any moral assessment of drones
U N DE RST AN DI N G T ARGETED KILLING A ND DRONES 19

is made more difficult if questions such as those noted above remain

unanswered. In order to construct such a context I will examine three
sources of discussion on the ethics of targeted killing. In the next chapter
the wisdom within the Christian tradition as well as Judaism and the
classical world of Greece and Rome will be consulted, and then in the
two succeeding chapters I will present a lively debate among Israeli au-
thors regarding targeted killing during the second Intifada, and the con-
temporary debate in the United States around our antiterrorist activities.
Using the insights gleaned from this material I will in the fifth and final
chapter assess the morality of the American use of drones as a means of
targeted killing.
 2

THE DISTANT CONTEXTS OF

THE DEBATE

The practice of targeted killing has long been employed and debated
among peoples of various places and times. Throughout Western history
there have been arguments about the morality of assassination, tyranni-
cide, and other forms of killing aimed at specific individuals. In most
circumstances the idea of targeted killing has been seen to violate the
moral standards that support the protection of human life. Yet moral
traditions have also found exceptional circumstances that have led to
approval of targeted killing in particular cases.
In this chapter we will examine the distant context for a discussion of
targeted killing. This distant context includes several traditions that have
influenced thinking on the topic of targeted killing: classical Greek and
Roman thought, ancient Judaism, and later Christian reflection. Western
philosophical and legal writings have also contributed insight on the vari-
ous forms of targeted killing.

TARGETED KILLING IN THE CLASSICAL WORLD

Perhaps the most discussed form of targeted killing throughout history

has been tyrannicide. This specific form of targeted killing will be the
focus for much of what follows. The historian Franklin Ford has written,

21
22 CHA P TER 2

“For at least two and a half millennia it has constituted in the eyes of
philosophers the only respectable link between ethics and political vio-
lence.” 1 It was the discussion of tyranny in Aristotle’s Politics that estab-
lished the framework for much of what followed in the West. In accord
with Plato, Aristotle maintained that whenever an entity contains a ration-
al element it is proper for the rational part to rule over the nonrational.
People differ in their capacity for rationality and, therefore, different
modes of rule or governance are more or less suitable for different cases.
A young child has a rational capacity that is incomplete and so it is
appropriate for a father to rule over a child. Such paternal governance is
inappropriate when the situation is of two adults with equal rationality.
For Aristotle despotic rule is illustrated in the master–slave relation-
ship. Such rule can be justifiable because those who are “naturally” slaves
lack the ability to be deliberative and are in need of a master to direct
them. 2 Despotic rule is for the sake of the master, not the slave. When
people have equal or similar rational ability, however, rule is to be for the
sake of the ruled. 3 When there is proper rule by one it is monarchy, where
the king rules for the good of all citizens. Political rule is a service that
citizens provide for one another. It is aimed at the common good. A tyrant
is a monarch who uses power not for the good of all citizens but for
personal benefit. To Aristotle, political rule is perverted or defective
when it is for the advantage of the ruler since this ignores the duty of
political leadership to serve the common good of all citizens of the state. 4
Tyranny, therefore, should be corrected; but the killing of the tyrant
was not always the permissible path to restoring good political order.
Aristotle’s treatment in Book Five of the Politics entailed a “case study”
approach that discussed a variety of examples of, and an array of motives
for, tyrannicide in ancient Greece. Tyrannicide was possible if the ruler
was a usurper or engaged in serious misrule. However, alternative meas-
ures for remedying the problem were preferable, if at all possible. Fur-
thermore, if the tyrant was to be brought down, Aristotle assumed it was
best done by elite representatives of the society—nobles, generals, relig-
ious leaders, and other figures of similar social standing. The idea was
that such people, while not immune to self-interest narrowly understood,
T H E DI ST AN T C ON T E X T S OF THE DEBA TE 23

were likely to have some sense of a wider duty to the society as a whole.
This assumption came to be called the melior pars (the better part) princi-
ple in subsequent theories of tyrannicide.
The true tyrant deserved death because he had made himself a person
outside the law by his own capricious behavior. However, the assassin
walked a thin line in trying to avoid a similar charge. Aristotle realized
that, although necessary at times, resorting to tyrannicide opened a door
to social disorder, even chaos. Thus, it was not a practice to be encour-
aged or made routine. If we follow the lead of the historian Franklin Ford
and see tyrannicide as a particular species of assassination, 5 it may be
claimed that ancient Greek thinkers like Aristotle frowned upon assassi-
nation in general but countenanced the possibility of some acts of tyranni-
cide. Nonetheless, there was concern that using tyrannicide as a defense
against misrule ran the risk of “damaging the painfully acquired set of
restraints lacking which good rule, too, could easily become impos-
sible.” 6

Ancient Rome

Cicero, that great defender of the Republic, may have been the first Ro-
man to defend tyrannicide, even by means of assassination. The assassi-
nation of Caesar overshadowed much of Cicero’s writing of De Officiis
(On Duties). Cicero observed that there was a distinction between partic-
ular duties and general ones, “For often the occasion arises when some-
thing that is generally and customarily considered to be dishonorable is
found not to be so.” 7 The particular example he cites to make this point
about a duty in special circumstances is the killing of Caesar. His defense
of the killing of Caesar became one of the most commonly cited prece-
dents by later writers who took up the question. Cicero is clear that he
viewed Caesar’s death as tyrannicide and he repeats that assertion in
several places in the text. 8 His only expressed lament is not over the death
of Caesar but the fact that his death did not lead to the restoration of the
Republic.
24 CHA P TER 2

Caesar was not only elected consul but was also given the powers of
dictator. This was a special office by which an individual was put at the
head of the Republic and vested with extraordinary power. Usually dicta-
tors served for six months and acted with the consent of the Senate.
Dictators were appointed by the consuls on the occasion of what we today
might call national emergency. In Caesar’s case it was civil war. For
Cicero the great threat Caesar posed to the Republic, which was already
in decline, was that Caesar was in his sixth year as consul and fifth year
as dictator. This trend of greater power accruing to Caesar, who contin-
ued to hold one office that should have rotated and another that ought to
have been temporary, threatened the very existence of the Republic.
Though Caesar was not especially brutal or capricious in his rule, that
was not the point for Cicero. Rather, it was the fear that “[w]ith the
frequent and orderly rotation of elective government once broken by a
military and political genius, how could anyone save the Republic from
eventual oblivion?” 9
Although not one of the conspirators himself, Cicero’s voice was the
one heard in the Senate calling for clemency for the assassins. He hoped
to see a restoration of the normal workings of the Republic and an end to
the rule by “strong men” who subverted the aristocratic and democratic
roles of the Senate and the Assembly. It was not to be, however, as Cicero
was slain less than two years later when the Second Triumvirate led by
Mark Antony ordered his death. 10
During the subsequent age of the empire there were abundant in-
stances of assassination, including many that were driven more by palace
intrigue and personal ambition than what might be justified by appeal to
some theory of principled tyrannicide. In his history of political homi-
cide, Franklin Ford suggests that the death of four Roman emperors might
be cited as examples of “tyrannicides in keeping with the classical defini-
tion of usurpation or flagrant misrule, or both,” which is not to deny there
may have been other lesser motives involved as well. 11 On the whole,
however, the number of assassinations that happened during the age of
classical Rome leaves a clear sense that the vast majority of such killings
had little to do with appeals to protection of the common good or resis-
T H E DI ST AN T C ON T E X T S OF THE DEBA TE 25

tance to unjust lethal aggression and were better explained by personal

ambition or vengeance.
Curiously, the Roman practice of warfare against its external enemies
seems to have been more reluctant concerning assassination than its inter-
nal politics might suggest. The Romans had a preference, perhaps out of a
sense of honor but also due to confidence in their military prowess, for
conquest on the battlefield over assassination of foreign enemies. Rome’s
military code prized victory through armed conflict that tested and re-
warded valor while disdaining the use of deception and treachery. Here is
an early source of what will be the later opposition to assassination based
on the use of methods deemed dishonorable.
So a lesson from the classical world is that targeted killing in the form
of assassination of a tyrant was sometimes permissible. Circumstances
that might affect support for such killing included who committed the act
(the melior pars, a private individual), the motive behind the act (defense
of the common good, personal ambition, vengeance), and the nature of
the tyrant (usurper, legitimate ruler).

TARGETED KILLING AND ANCIENT ISRAEL

During the intertestamental era, a period of approximately 450 years from

the final quarter of the fifth century BC to the first quarter of the first
century AD, Israel struggled against foreign powers to maintain indepen-
dent rule and often suffered under governance by others. Persian, Greek,
Egyptian, and Syrian armies successively imposed their rule upon the
Jewish people. In 166 BC the Maccabean revolt took place that eventu-
ated two years later in the defeat of Antiochus of Syria at Jerusalem, the
rededication of the Temple to Yahweh after the desecration of pagan
worship by Antiochus, and the pushing of Syrian forces out of Galilee in
the north. The successors to the leadership of Judas Maccabeus came to
be known as the Hasmonean dynasty, but they were not effective rulers.
In 64 BC one of the Hasmoneans appealed to Pompey to prop up the
failed state and soon a Roman garrison was established at Jerusalem. The
Romans, however, were less domineering than the earlier occupation
26 CHA P TER 2

forces and followed a policy of fairly lax oversight in cultural, especially

religious, matters. As a result, the local Roman rulers found a number of
Jews willing to accommodate to the imperial presence. Those more criti-
cal of Rome, while appealing to the legacy of Maccabeus, did not find
sufficient support to mount a serious challenge to the Roman presence.
Those nonaccommodationists known as Zealots advocated violent re-
sistance to the Roman presence in Palestine. They resisted the taxation
that Rome imposed on its subject peoples. True theocrats, the Zealots
wanted a society governed by Mosaic Law and they hated not only their
Roman occupiers, but Jews who collaborated with the Romans. In place
of the Roman Empire, which they saw as idolatrous, the Zealots wanted
to establish a new Jewish state that could base its political order on
Mosaic tenets. Lacking sufficient support among the general population
to directly confront Rome, the Zealot movement went underground.
In time these Zealots were given a different name by the Romans, the
sicarii or “dagger men” for their quiet but lethal attacks on Roman sol-
diers and other officials. The assassinations were not only employed
against the Roman occupiers but also directed at those Jews deemed too
cooperative with Rome. 12 The Zealots began a public revolt in AD 66 that
led to disaster for the Jewish people as Rome forcefully quelled the upris-
ing that ended with the mass suicide of the trapped revolutionaries at
Masada. Most devastating was the complete destruction of the Jerusalem
Temple, never again to be rebuilt.
Of course it was not the sicarii who were the first of the Hebrews to
engage in assassination of despised political rulers. In the book of Judges
there is the story that the Lord raised up Ehud to deliver the Israelites
from the Moabite king Eglon, who had ruled over them for eighteen
years. After offering the king the tribute from his people, Ehud stabbed
the king using a dagger that had been kept hidden under his clothes. He
fled before the body could be discovered. According to the narrative,
Ehud then led a successful revolt against the Moabites and won the Israe-
lite tribes their freedom. 13
Following the story of Ehud there is also the tale of Deborah and
Barak, she the prophetess and he the military leader who chose to attack
T H E DI ST AN T C ON T E X T S OF THE DEBA TE 27

the Canaanite foe. After the Israelite victory over the Canaanite army, the
defeated general Sisera fled for his life. He was welcomed into the tent of
one Jael, wife of a man that Sisera had reason to believe would protect
him. Jael put the general at ease and encouraged him to rest while she
would stand guard. However, while Sisera slept she killed him and later
showed the corpse to Barak. 14 Later Deborah sings the praises of Jael as a
blessed woman. 15
The book of Judith, though set in the time of the Judges, is a fictional
story most likely written sometime around 110 to 90 BC. It is a tale of an
individual whose name simply means “Jewish woman.” She represents a
type, someone at the bottom of the social hierarchy of Israel, a childless
widow. Yet she is portrayed as a model of faith, with more trust in God
and courage against her foe than any of the males in the story. Judith uses
her beauty and charm to draw close to Holofernes, the Assyrian general
sent to punish the Jews for being disloyal vassals to Nebuchadnezzar.
Seizing the opportunity to kill Holofernes while he lay intoxicated and
sleeping, she uses the general’s own sword to cut off his head and does it
in the name of Yahweh who saves the people through unexpected means,
such as this lowly woman. Biblical scholars see the book as a “reflection
on the meaning of the yearly Passover observance.” 16 It reminds the
faithful Israelites that their God does not abandon them and will raise up
individuals to save the people even if the deliverance comes in surprising
ways.
Another story drawn from the era of the Judges tells the tale of Abime-
lech, one of the sons of Gideon born to his concubine. Gideon, a military
leader of renown, left behind dozens of male heirs born to wives and
concubines. Abimelech allies himself with the inhabitants of Shechem, an
important town where his mother had kin. Making the case that he would
be a better ruler over them than any of the other sons of Gideon because
he was their kinsman, Abimelech gains the support of the Shechemites.
Abimelech proceeds to systematically kill his fraternal rivals after hiring
a group of thugs to do the work. He then proclaims himself king over the
people and rules for several years before encountering a rebellion due to
his misrule. During the siege of a city held by his opponents, Abimelech
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go about the work of memory ... but the past was lost to me this
morning. The doors shut and I was marooned in the meager present.

Who was this American who had come to Luxor? and why?

For a moment the serenity which I have so long practiced failed me

and I feared for my life. The long-awaited assassins had finally
come. But then that animal within who undoes us all with his fierce
will to live, grew quiet, accepting again the discipline I have so long
maintained over him, his obedience due less perhaps to my strong
will than to his fatigue, for he is no longer given to those rages and
terrors and exultations which once dominated me as the moon does
the tide: his defeat being my old age’s single victory, and a bitter
one.

I took the pages that I had written and hid them in a wide crack in the
marble-topped Victorian washstand. I then put on a tie and linen
jacket and, cane in hand, my most bemused and guileless
expression upon my face, I left the room and walked down the tall
dim corridor to the lobby, limping perhaps a little more than was
necessary, exaggerating my quiet genuine debility to suggest, if
possible, an even greater helplessness. If they had come at last to
kill me, I thought it best to go to them while I still held in check the
creature terror. As I approached the lobby, I recalled Cicero’s death
and took courage from his example. He too had been old and tired,
too exasperated at the last even to flee.

My assassin (if such he is and I still do not know) looks perfectly

harmless: a red-faced American in a white suit crumpled from heat
and travel. In atrocious Arabic he was addressing the manager who,
though he speaks no English, is competent in French, is accustomed
to speaking French to Occidentals. My compatriot, however, was
obstinate and smothered with a loud voice the polite European
cadences of the manager.

I moved slowly to the desk, tapping emphatically with my cane on

the tile floor. Both turned; it was the moment which I have so long
dreaded: the eyes of an American were turned upon me once again.
Would he know? Does he know? I felt all the blood leave my head.
With a great effort, I remained on my feet; steadying my voice which
has nowadays a tendency to quaver even when I am at ease, I said
to the American, in our own language, the language I had not once
spoken in nearly twenty years, “Can I be of assistance, sir?” The
words sounded strange on my lips and I was aware that I had given
them an ornateness which was quite unlike my usual speech. His
look of surprise was, I think, perfectly genuine. I felt a cowardly relief:
not yet, not yet.

“Oh!” the American stared at me stupidly for a moment (his face is

able to suggest a marvelous range of incomprehension, as I have
since discovered).

“My name is Richard Hudson,” I said, pronouncing carefully the

name by which I am known in Egypt, the name with which I have
lived so long that it sometimes seems as if all my life before was only
a dream, a fantasy of a time which never was except in reveries, in
those curious waking-dreams which I often have these days when I
am tired, at sundown usually, when my mind often loses all control
over itself and the memory grows confused with imaginings, and I
behold worlds and splendors which I have never known yet which
are vivid enough to haunt me even in the lucid mornings: I am dying,
of course, and my brain is only letting up, releasing its images with a
royal abandon, confusing everything like those surrealist works of art
which had some vogue in my youth.

“Oh,” said the American again and then, having accepted my reality,
he pushed a fat red hand toward me. “The name is Butler, Bill Butler.
Glad to meet you. Didn’t expect to find another white ... didn’t expect
to meet up with an American in these parts.” I shook the hand.

“Let me help you,” I said, letting go the hand quickly. “The manager
speaks no English.”

“I been studying Arabic,” said Butler with a certain sullenness. “Just

finished a year’s course at Ottawa Center for this job. They don’t
speak it here like we studied it.”
“It takes time,” I said soothingly. “You’ll catch the tone.”

“Oh, I’m sure of that. Tell them I got a reservation.” Butler mopped
his full glistening cheeks with a handkerchief.

“You have a reservation for William Butler?” I asked the manager in

French.

He shook his head, looking at the register in front of him. “Is he an

American?” He looked surprised when I said that he was. “But it
didn’t sound like English.”

“He was trying to speak Arabic.”

The manager sighed. “Would you ask him to show me his passport
and authorizations?”

I communicated this to Butler who pulled a bulky envelope from his

pocket and handed it to the manager. As well as I could, without
appearing inquisitive, I looked at the papers. I could tell nothing. The
passport was evidently in order. The numerous authorizations from
the Egyptian Government in the Pan-Arabic League, however,
seemed to interest the manager intensely.

“Perhaps ...” I began, but he was already telephoning the police.

Though I speak Arabic with difficulty, I can understand it easily. The
manager was inquiring at length about Mr. Butler and about his
status in Egypt. The police chief evidently knew all about him and the
conversation was short.

“Would you ask him to sign the register?” The manager’s expression
was puzzled. I wondered what on earth it was all about.

“Don’t know why,” said Butler, carving his name into the register with
the ancient pen, “there’s all this confusion. I wired for a room last
week from Cairo.”
“Communications have not been perfected in the Arab countries,” I
said (fortunately for me, I thought to myself).

When he had done registering, a boy came and took his bags and
the key to his room.

“Much obliged to you, Mr. Hudson.”

“Not at all.”

“Like to see something of you, if you don’t mind. Wonder if you could
give me an idea of the lay of the land.”

I said I should be delighted and we made a date to meet for tea in

the cool of the late afternoon, on the terrace.

When he had gone, I asked the manager about him but he, old friend
that he was (he has been manager for twelve years and looks up to
me as an elder statesman, in the hotel at least, since I have lived
there longer), merely shrugged and said, “It’s too much for me, sir.”
And I could get no more out of him.

2
The terrace was nearly cool when we met at six o’clock, at the hour
when the Egyptian sun has just lost its unbearable gold, falling, a
scarlet disc, into the white stone hills across the dull river which, at
this season, winds narrowly among the mud-flats, a third of its usual
size, diminished by heat.

“Don’t suppose we could order a drink ... not that I’m much of a
drinking man, you know. Get quite a thirst, though, on a day like
this.”

I told him that since foreigners had ceased to come here, the bar had
been closed down: Moslems for religious reasons did not use
alcohol.

“I know, I know,” he said. “Studied all about them, even read the
Koran. Frightful stuff, too.”

“No worse than most documents revealed by heaven,” I said gently,

not wanting to get on to that subject. “But tell me what brings you to
these parts?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” said Butler genially, taking
the cup of mint tea which the servant had brought him. On the river a
boat with a red sail tacked slowly in the hot breeze. “The manager
tells me you’ve been up here for twenty years.”

“You must have found a language in common.”

Butler chuckled. “These devils understand you well enough if they

want to. But you....”

“I was an archaeologist at one time,” I said and I told him the familiar
story which I have repeated so many times now that I have almost
come to believe it. “I was from Boston originally. Do you know
Boston? I often think of those cold winters with a certain longing. Too
much light can be as trying as too little. Some twenty years ago, I
decided to retire, to write a book of memoirs.” This was a new,
plausible touch, “Egypt was always my single passion and so I came
to Luxor, to this hotel where I’ve been quite content, though hardly
industrious.”

“How come they let you in? I mean there was all that trouble along
around when the Pan-Arabic League shut itself off from civilization.”

“I was very lucky, I suppose. I had many friends in the academic

world of Cairo and they were able to grant me a special
dispensation.”

“Old hand, then, with the natives?”

“But a little out of practice. All my Egyptian friends have seen fit to
die and I live now as though I were already dead myself.”

This had the desired effect of chilling him. Though he was still young,
hardly fifty, the immediacy of death, even when manifested in the
person of a chance acquaintance, did inspire a certain gravity.

He mumbled something which I did not catch. I think my hearing has

begun to go: not that I am deaf but I have, at times, a monotonous
buzzing in my ears which makes conversation difficult, though not
impossible. According to the local doctor my arteries have hardened
and at any moment one is apt to burst among the convolutions of the
brain, drowning my life. But I do not dwell on this, at least not in
conversation.

“There’s been a big shake-up in the Atlantic community. Don’t

suppose you’d hear much about it around here since from the
newspapers I’ve seen in Egypt they have a pretty tight censorship.”

I said I knew nothing about recent activities in the Atlantic community

or anywhere else, other than Egypt.

“Well they’ve worked out an alliance with Pan-Arabia which will open
the whole area to us. Of course no oil exploitation is allowed but
there’ll still be a lot of legitimate business between our sphere and
these people.”

I listened to him patiently while he explained the state of the world to

me; it seemed unchanged: the only difference was that there were
now new and unfamiliar names in high places. He finished with a
patriotic harangue about the necessity of the civilized to work in
harmony together for the good of mankind: “And this opening up of
Egypt has given us the chance we’ve been waiting for for years, and
we mean to take it.”

“You mean to extend trade?”

“No, I mean the Word.”

“The Word?” I repeated numbly, the old fear returning.

“Why sure; I’m a Cavite Communicator.” He rapped perfunctorily on

the table twice. I tapped feebly with my cane on the tile: in the days
of the Spanish persecution such signals were a means of secret
communication (not that the persecution had really been so great but
it had been our decision to dramatize it in order that our people might
become more conscious of their splendid if temporary isolation and
high destiny); it had not occurred to me that, triumphant, the Cavites
should still cling to those bits of fraternal ritual which I’d conceived
with a certain levity in the early days. But of course the love of ritual,
of symbol is peculiar to our race and I reflected bleakly on this as I
returned the solemn signal which identified us as brother Cavites.

“The world must have changed indeed,” I said at last. “It was a
Moslem law that no foreign missionaries be allowed in the Arab
League.”

“Pressure!” Butler looked very pleased. “Nothing obvious of course;

had to be done though.”

“For economic reasons?”

“No, for Cavesword. That’s what we’re selling because that’s the one
thing we’ve got.” And he blinked seriously at the remnant of scarlet
sun; his voice had grown husky, like a man selling some commodity
on television in the old days. Yet the note of sincerity, whether
simulated or genuine, was unmistakably resolute.

“You may have a difficult time,” I said, not wanting to go on with this
conversation but unable to direct it short of walking away. “The
Moslems are very stubborn in their faith.”

Butler laughed confidently. “We’ll change all that. It may not be easy
at first because we’ve got to go slow, feel our way, but once we know
the lay of the land, you might say, we’ll be able to produce some big
backing, some real backing.”
His meaning was unmistakable. Already I could imagine those
Squads of the Word in action throughout this last terrestrial refuge.
Long ago they had begun as eager instruction teams; after the first
victories, however, they had become adept at demoralization, at
brain-washing and auto-hypnosis, using all the psychological
weapons which our race in its ingenuity had fashioned in the mid-
century, becoming so perfect with the passage of time that
imprisonment or execution for unorthodoxy was no longer
necessary: even the most recalcitrant, the most virtuous man, could
be reduced to a sincere and useful orthodoxy, no different in quality
from his former antagonists, his moment of rebellion forgotten, his
reason anchored securely at last in the general truth. I was also quite
confident that their methods had improved even since my
enlightened time.

“I hope you’ll be able to save these poor people,” I said, detesting

myself for this hypocrisy.

“Not a doubt in the world,” he clapped his hands. “They don’t know
what happiness we’ll bring them.” Difficult as it was to accept such
hyperbole, I believed in his sincerity: he is one of those zealots
without whose offices no large work in the world can be successfully
propagated. I did not feel more than a passing pity for the Moslems:
they were doomed but their fate would not unduly distress them for
my companion was perfectly right when he spoke of the happiness
which would be theirs: a blithe mindlessness which would in no way
affect their usefulness as citizens. We had long since determined
that for the mass this was the only humane way of ridding them of
superstition in the interest of Cavesword and the better life.

“It’s strange, though, that they should let you in,” I said, quite aware
that he might be my assassin after all, permitted by the Egyptian
government to destroy me and, with me, the last true memory of the
mission. I had not completely got over my first impression that Butler
was an accomplished actor, sounding me out before the final victory
of the Cavites, the necessary death and total obliteration of the
person and the memory of Eugene Luther, now grown old with a
false name in a burning land.

If he was an actor, he was a master. He thumped on interminably

about America, John Cave and the necessity of spreading his word
throughout the world. I listened patiently as the sun went abruptly
behind the hills and all the stars appeared in the moonless waste of
sky. Fires appeared in the hovels on the far shore of the Nile, yellow
points of light like fireflies hovering by that other river which I shall
never see again.

“Must be nearly suppertime.”

“Not quite,” I said, relieved that Butler’s face was now invisible. I was
not used to great red faces after my years in Luxor among the lean,
the delicate and the dark. Now only his voice was a dissonance in
the evening.

“Hope the food’s edible.”

“It isn’t bad, though it may take some getting used to.”

“Well, I’ve a strong stomach. Guess that’s why they chose me for this
job.”

This job? could it mean...? but I refused to let myself be panicked. I

have lived too long with terror to be much moved now; especially
since my life of its own generation has brought me to dissolution’s
edge. “Are there many of you?” I asked politely. The day was ending
and I was growing weary, all senses blunted and some confused.
“Many Communicators?”

“Quite a few,” said Butler. “They’ve been training us for the last year
in Canada for the big job of opening up Pan-Arabia. Of course we’ve
known for years that it was just a matter of time before the
government got us in here.”
“Then you’ve been thoroughly grounded in the Arab culture? and
disposition?”

“Oh, sure. May have to come to you every now and then, though, if
you don’t mind.” He chuckled to show that his patronage would be
genial.

“I should be honored to assist.”

“We anticipate trouble at first. We have to go slow. Pretend we’re just

available for instruction while we get to know the local big shots.
Then, when the time comes....” He left the ominous sentence
unfinished. I could imagine the rest, however. Fortunately, nature by
then, with or without Mr. Butler’s assistance, would have removed
me as a witness.

Inside the hotel the noise of plates being moved provided a familiar
reference. I was conscious of being hungry: as the body’s
mechanism jolts to a halt, it wants more fuel than it ever did at its
optimum. I wanted to go in but before I could gracefully extricate
myself Butler asked me a question. “You the only American in these
parts?”

I said that I was.

“Funny nothing was said about there being any American up here. I
guess they didn’t know you were here.”

“Perhaps they were counting me among the American colony at

Cairo,” I said smoothly. “I suppose, officially, I am a resident of that
city. I was on the Advisory Board of the Museum.” This was not
remotely true but since, to my knowledge, there is no Advisory Board
it would be difficult for anyone to establish my absence from it.

“That must be it.” Butler seemed easily satisfied, perhaps too easily.
“Certainly makes things a lot easier for us, having somebody like you
up here, another Cavite, who knows the lingo.”
“I’ll help in any way I can; though I’m afraid I have passed the age of
usefulness. Like the British king, I can only advise.”

“Well, that’s enough. I’m the active one anyway. My partner takes
care of the other things.”

“Partner? I thought you were alone.”

“No. I’m to get my heels in first; then my colleague comes on in a few

weeks. That’s standard procedure. He’s a psychologist and an
authority on Cavesword. We all are, of course—authorities, that is—
but he’s gone into the early history and so on a little more thoroughly
than us field men usually do.”

So there was to be another one, a cleverer one. I found myself both

dreading and looking forward to the arrival of this dangerous person:
it would be interesting to communicate with a good mind again, or at
least an instructed one: though Butler has not given me much
confidence in the new Cavite Communicators. Nevertheless, I am
intensely curious about the Western world since my flight from it. I
have been effectively cut off from any real communion with the West
for two decades. Rumors, stray bits of information sometimes
penetrate as far as Luxor but I can make little sense of them, for the
Cavites are, as I well know, not given to candor while the Egyptian
newspapers exist in a fantasy world of Pan-Arabic dominion. There
was so much I wished to know that I hesitated to ask Butler, not for
fear of giving myself away but because I felt that any serious
conversation with him would be pointless: I rather doubted if he knew
what he was supposed to know, much less all the details which I
wished to know and which even a moderately intelligent man, if not
hopelessly zealous, might be able to supply me with.

I had a sudden idea. “You don’t happen to have a recent edition of

the Testament, do you? Mine’s quite old and out of date.”

“What date?” This was unexpected.

“The year? I don’t recall. About thirty years old, I should say.”
There was a silence. “Of course yours is a special case, being
marooned like this. There’s a ruling about it which I think will protect
you fully since you’ve had no contact with the outside; anyway, as a
Communicator, I must ask you for your old copy.”

“Why certainly but ...”

“I’ll give you a new one, of course. You see it is against the law to
have any Testament which predates the second Cavite Council.”

I was beginning to understand: after the schism a second Council

had been inevitable even though no reference to it has ever
appeared in the Egyptian press. “The censorship here is thorough,” I
said. “I had no idea there had been a new Council.”

“What a bunch of savages!” Butler groaned with disgust. “That’s

going to be one of our main jobs, you know, education, freeing the
press. There has been almost no communication between the two
spheres of influence....”

“Spheres of influence.” How easily the phrase came to his lips! All
the jargon of the journalists of fifty years ago has, I gather, gone into
the language, providing the inarticulate with a number of made-up
phrases calculated to blur even their none too clear meanings. I
assume of course that Butler is as inarticulate as he seems, that he
is typical of the first post-Cavite generation.

“You must give me a clear picture of what has been happening in

America since my retirement.” But I rose to prevent him from giving
me, at that moment at least, any further observations on “spheres of
influence.”

I stood for a moment, resting on my cane: I had stood up too quickly

and as usual suffered a spell of dizziness; I was also ravenously
hungry. Butler stamped out a cigarette on the tile.

“Be glad to tell you anything you want to know. That’s my business.”
He laughed shortly. “Well, time for chow. I’ve got some anti-bacteria
tablets they gave us before we came out, supposed to keep the food
from poisoning us.”

“I’m sure you won’t need them here.”

He kept pace with my slow shuffle. “Well, it increases eating

pleasure, too.” Inadvertently, I shuddered as I recognized yet another
glib phrase from the past; it had seemed such a good idea to exploit
the vulgar language of the advertisers. I suffered a brief spasm of
guilt.

3
We dined together in the airy salon which was nearly empty at this
season except for a handful of government officials and
businessmen who eyed us without much interest even though
Americans are not a common sight in Egypt. They were of course
used to me although, as a rule, I keep out of sight, taking my meals
in my own room and frequenting those walks along the river bank
which avoid altogether the town of Luxor.

I found, after I had dined, that physically I was somewhat restored,

better able to cope with Butler. In fact, inadvertently, I actually found
myself, in the madness of my great age, enjoying his company, a
sure proof of loneliness if not of senility. He too, after taking pills
calculated to fill him “chock full of vim and vigor” (that is indeed the
phrase he used), relaxed considerably and spoke of his life in the
United States. He had no talent for evoking what he would
doubtlessly call “the large picture” but in a casual, disordered way he
was able to give me a number of details about his own life and work
which did suggest the proportions of the world from which he had so
recently come and which I had, in my folly, helped create.

On religious matters he was unimaginative and doctrinaire,

concerned with the letter of the commands and revelations rather
than with the spirit such as it was, or is. I could not resist the
dangerous maneuver of asking him, at the correct moment of course
(we were speaking of the time of the schisms), what had become of
Eugene Luther.

“Who?”

The coffee cup trembled in my hand. I set it carefully on the table. I

wondered if his hearing was sound. I repeated my own name, long
lost to me, but mine still in the secret dimness of memory.

“I don’t place the name. Was he a friend of the Liberator?”

“Why, yes. I even used to know him slightly but that was many years
ago, before your time. I’m curious to know what might have become
of him. I suppose he’s dead.”

“I’m sorry but I don’t place the name.” He looked at me with some
interest. “I guess you must be almost old enough to have seen him.”

I nodded, lowering my lids with a studied reverence, as though

dazzled at the recollection of great light. “I saw him several times.”

“Boy, I envy you! There aren’t many left who have seen him with
their own eyes. What was he like?”

“Just like his photographs,” I said, shifting the line of inquiry: there is
always the danger that a trap is being prepared for me. I was
noncommittal, preferring to hear Butler talk of himself. Fortunately,
he preferred this too and for nearly an hour I learned as much as I
shall ever need to know about the life of at least one Communicator
of Cavesword. While he talked, I watched him furtively for some sign
of intention but there was none that I could detect; yet I was
suspicious. He had not known my name and I could not understand
what obscure motive might cause him to pretend ignorance unless of
course he does know who I am and wishes to confuse me,
preparatory to some trap.
I excused myself soon afterwards and went to my room, after first
accepting a copy of the newest Testament handsomely bound in
Plasticon (it looks like leather) and promising to give him my old
proscribed copy the next day.

The first thing that I did, after locking the door to my room, was to
take the book over to my desk and open it to the index. My eye
traveled down that column of familiar names until it came to the L’s.

At first I thought that my eyes were playing a trick upon me. I held
the page close to the light, wondering if I might not have begun to
suffer delusions, the not unfamiliar concomitant of solitude and old
age. But my eyes were adequate and the hallucination, if real, was
vastly convincing: my name was no longer there. Eugene Luther no
longer existed in that Testament which was largely his own
composition.

I let the book shut of itself, as new books will. I sat down at the desk,
understanding at last the extraordinary ignorance of Butler: I had
been obliterated from history; my place in time erased. It was as if I
had never lived.
 Three

1
I have had in the last few days some difficulty in avoiding the
company of Mr. Butler. Fortunately, he is now very much involved
with the local functionaries and I am again able to return to my
narrative. I don’t think Butler has been sent here to assassinate me
but, on the other hand, from certain things he has said and not said, I
am by no means secure in his ignorance; however, one must go on.
At best, it will be a race between him and those hardened arteries
which span the lobes of my brain. My only curiosity concerns the
arrival next week of his colleague who is, I gather, of the second
generation and of a somewhat bookish turn according to Butler who
would not, I fear, be much of a judge. Certain things, though, which I
have learned during the last few days about Iris Mortimer make me
more than ever wish to recall our common years as precisely as
possible for what I feared might happen has indeed, if Butler is to be
believed, come to pass, and it is now with a full burden of hindsight
that I revisit the scenes of a half century ago.

2
I had got almost nowhere with my life of Julian. I had become
discouraged with his personality though his actual writings continued
to delight me. As it so often happens in history I had found it difficult
really to get at him: the human attractive part of Julian was undone
for me by those bleak errors in deed and in judgment which
depressed me even though they derived most logically from the man
and his time: that fatal wedding which finally walls off figures of
earlier ages from the present, keeping them strange despite the
most intense and imaginative recreation. They are not we. We are
not they. And I refused to resort to the low trick of fashioning Julian in
my own image of him. I respected his integrity in time and deplored
the division of centuries. My work at last came to a halt and,
somewhat relieved, I closed my house in the autumn of the year and
traveled west to California.

I had a small income which made modest living and careful travel
easy for me ... a fortunate state of affairs since, in my youth, I was of
an intense disposition, capable of the passions and violence of a
Rimbaud without, fortunately, the will to translate them into reality;
had I had more money, or none, I might have died young, leaving
behind the brief memory of a minor romanticist. As it was, I had a
different role to play in the comedy; one for which I was, after some
years of reading beside my natal river, peculiarly fitted to play.

I journeyed to southern California where I had not been since my

service in one of the wars. I had never really explored that exotic
land and I was curious about it, more curious than I have ever been
before or since about any single part of the world. Egypt one knows
without visiting it, and China the same; but that one area of sandy
beaches and orange groves which circles the city of Los Angeles, an
artificial place created from desert and sure to lapse back again into
dust the moment some national disaster breaks its line of life and the
waters no longer flow, has always fascinated me.

I was of course interested in the movies, though they no longer had

the same hold over the public imagination that they had had in
earlier decades when a process of film before light could project,
larger than life, not only on vast screens but also upon the
impressionable minds of an enormous audience made
homogeneous by a common passion, shadowy figures which, like
the filmy envelopes of the stoic deities, floated to earth in public
dreams, suggesting a braver more perfect world where love reigned
and only the wicked died. But then time passed and the new deities
lost their worshipers: there were too many gods and the devotees
got too used to them, realizing finally that they were only mortals,
involved not in magical rites but in a sordid business. Television (the
home altar) succeeded the movies and their once populous and
ornate temples, modeled tastefully on baroque and Byzantine
themes, fell empty, the old gods moving to join the new hierarchies,
becoming the domesticated godlings of television which, although it
held the attention of the majority of the population, did not enrapture,
did not possess dreams or shape days with longing and with secret
imaginings the way the classic figures of an earlier time had. Though
I was of an age to recall the gallant days of the movies, the nearly
mythical power which they had held for millions of people, not all
simple, I was not really interested in that aspect of California. I was
more intrigued by the manners, by the cults, by the works of this
coastal people so unlike the older world of the East and so
antipathetic to our race’s first home in Europe. Needless to say, I
found them much like everyone else, except for minor differences of
no real consequence.

I stayed at a large hotel not too happily balanced in design between

the marble-and-potted-palm décor of the Continental Hotel in Paris
and the chrome and glass of an observation car on a newer train.

I unpacked, telephoned friends most of whom were not home. The

one whom at last I found in was the one I knew the least, a minor
film writer who had married money with great success and had, most
altruistically, given up the composition of films for which the
remaining movie-goers were no doubt thankful. He devoted his time
to assisting his wife in becoming the first hostess of Beverly Hills.
She had, I recalled from one earlier meeting, the mind of a child of
twelve, but an extremely active child and a good one.
Hastings, such was the writer’s name (her name was either Ethel or
Valerie, two names which I always confuse due to a particularly
revolutionary course I once took in mnemonics), invited me
immediately to a party. I went.

It seemed like spring though it was autumn, and it seemed like an

assortment of guests brought together in a ship’s dining room to
celebrate New Year’s Eve though, in fact, the gathering was largely
made up of close acquaintances. Since I knew almost no one, I had
a splendid time.

My hostess, beyond a brilliant greeting, a gold figure all in green with

gold dust in her hair, left me alone. Hastings was more solicitous, a
nervous gray man with a speech impediment which took the form of
a rather charming sign before any word which began with an
aspirate.

“We, ah, have a better place coming up. Farther up the mountains
with a marvelous view of the, ah, whole city. You will love it, Gene.
Ah, haven’t signed a lease yet, but soon.” While we talked he
steered me through the crowds of handsome and bizarre people
(none of them was from California I discovered: most were Central
Europeans or British; those who were not pretended to be one or the
other; some sounded like both). I was introduced to magnificent girls
exactly like their movie selves but since they all tended to look a
great deal alike, the effect was somehow spoiled. But I was a tourist
and not critical. I told a striking blonde that she would indeed be
excellent in a musical extravaganza based upon The Sea Gull. She
thought so too and my host and I moved on to the patio.

Beside a jade-green pool illuminated from beneath (and a little dirty, I

noticed, with leaves floating upon the water: the décor was becoming
tarnished, the sets had been used too long and needed striking.
Hollywood was becoming old without distinction), a few of the quieter
guests sat in white iron chairs while paper lanterns glowed prettily on
the palms and everywhere, untidily, grew roses, jasmine and lilac: it
was a fantastic garden, all out of season and out of place. The
guests beside the pool were much the same; except for one:
Clarissa.

“You know each other?” Hastings’ voice, faintly pleased, was

drowned by our greetings and I was pulled into a chair by Clarissa
who had elected to dress herself like an odalisque which made her
look, consequently, more indigenous than any of the other guests;
this was perhaps her genius: her marvelous adaptiveness.

“We’ll be quite happy here,” said Clarissa, waving our host away. “Go
and abuse your other guests.”

Hastings trotted off; those who had been talking to Clarissa talked to
themselves and beneath a flickering lantern the lights of Los
Angeles, revealed in a wedge between two hills, added the proper
note of lunacy, for at the angle from which I viewed those lights they
seemed to form a monster Christmas tree, poised crazily in the
darkness.

Clarissa and I exchanged notes on the months that had intervened

since our luncheon.

“And you gave up Julian, too?”

“Yes ... but why 'too’?” I was irritated by the implication that I gave up
all things before they were properly done.

“I feel you don’t finish things, Eugene. Not that you should; but I do
worry about you.”

“It’s good of you,” I said, discovering that at a certain angle the

Christmas tree could be made to resemble a rocket’s flare arrested
in space.

“Now don’t take that tone with me. I have your interest at heart.” She
expressed herself with every sign of sincerity in that curious flat
language which she spoke so fluently yet which struck upon the ear
untruly, as though it were, in its homeliness, the highest artifice.